Oral Storytelling Web

Tying up the myth

Very little of the atmosphere of story telling can be provided on a printed page. A few interesting remarks of one informant may be mentioned. In a native setting of the upper Cowlitz river, according to Mrs. Mary Eyley, stories that were very long would be told in two or more successive nights. In times gone by it was the custom to make a halt, perhaps when the auditors were disappearing or dropping off to sleep, saying something such as: … “Now I will tie up the myth,” implying that the myth was like a canoe, and had to be moored to a log or tree along the river until the next night’s myth journey. When story telling was in order the next evening the raconteur would perhaps say, … “Now I will untie the myth,” and the narrative would proceed from where it had halted.

Continuing the simile, should the raconteur wander from the main stream of the narrative or diverge into a side channel of gossip or other irrelevance, one of the auditors might admonish by calling out, … ‘Your myth might float away.’ It is also of interest to note that each sentence or perhaps even each phrase of the narrative was concluded with an affirmative semi-ritual call of ‘i’…!‘ literally ‘Yes!’ from the auditors, who if awake were expected to respond regularly in that somewhat fatiguing manner. In these sceptical, degenerate, modern days the myths are often received by a merely smiling or even relatively unresponsive audience.